Math 483-3, Algebraic Geometry III

Mihnea Popa
Office: Lunt 210
Tel: 847-491-5576
email: mpopa@math.northwestern.edu
  • Meeting times: MWF 10-10:50, Lunt 102
  • First meeting: Monday, March 30, 2015
  • Office hours: M 12-1 and by appointment
Recommended texts. I will not use any particular text, but the following books are useful: A. Beauville “Complex Algebraic Surfaces", R. Lazarsfeld "Positivity in Algebraic Geometry", J. Kollár and S. Mori "Birational Geometry of Algebraic Varieties", H. Esnault and E. Viehweg "Lectures on Vanishing Theorems".
Brief course description: The goal of the course is to use the Kodaira classification of algebraic varieties as motivation for introducing a number of key tools in Algebraic Geometry: intersection numbers, Riemann-Roch theorems, singularities, positivity, and vanishing theorems. I will use all of this material to explain results and conjectures regarding the Kodaira dimension of a smooth projective variety, focusing on Iitaka's conjecture about its subadditivity in families.
This is not required, but I encourage you to turn in solutions to the various exercises I will include in the lectures.